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The Johns Hopkins University Press
March 1997
On Sale: March 6, 1997
272 pages
ISBN: 0801854563
EAN: 9780801854569
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A few minutes before midnight on December 9, 1993, a group
of scientists at the Princeton University Plasma Physics
Laboratory produced the first definitive demonstration of
controlled fusion energy. Within the confines of a
doughnut-shaped device known as TFTR, a plasma consisting of
equal parts tritium and deuterium was superheated by atomic
beams--producing a second-long burst of energy that peaked
at three million watts. For a brief instant, the power of
the Sun had been captured on Earth.In The Fusion Quest, T.
Kenneth Fowler offers a vivid and colorful insider's
account of the decades-long search for fusion power--a
potentially abundant and environmentally "clean" energy
source that could sustain industrial society in the
twenty-first century and beyond. Scientists have known for
more than sixty years that nuclear fusion powers the sun and
stars. But would it work on Earth? To help answer this
question, Fowler explains the physical principles on which
fusion is based, describes the experiments that have led to
the present state of the art, and shows how all these
considerations would affect the design of possible
fusion-based nuclear power plants.Fowler describes magnets
nearly as cold as outer space surrounding miniature
"stars" hotter than the sun; lasers that for the merest
split-second produce a blinding flash more powerful than
every light bulb in America turned on at once. And he
recounts the exciting discoveries of classical physics from
Newton to Einstein, from Faraday to Lorentz, that provide
the foundation of fusion science today. Ultimately, The
Fusion Quest offers an informative and timely look at
fusion's potential to provide an environmentally acceptable
new energy source in a future more vulnerable to energy
shortages and pollution than many of us realize.
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